All the Reasons America is Retarded (Dona

[Jerome Scuggs]

No disrespect intended toward you, but I still choose to side with the field of evolutionary biology on this one. I do agree that excessively generalizing based on the perceived traits of people is a kind of intellectual laziness. But I do still stand by the belief that there is a biological component to racism, because that's what the research currently indicates.

lil bit of this, lil bit of that

I don't have some exact figure here but i'm assuming like 99.9% of all animals have a genetic predisposition to fear/dislike "different" animals - the evolutionary equivalent of "playing it safe" to protect that animal from encountering a potential predator

But then with humans you throw in sentience and the shit gets complicated. People can rationalize and feed a racist belief because it confirms their unconscious initial aversion to seeing a "different" animal, but everyone sort of defines "different" differently, and everyone learns and experiences different information and environments.

So cultural traits can appear and disappear in response to new circumstances much faster than biological ones -- you might even call culture a kind of pseudo-genome -- but they still exist only because they've provided some advantage, at some point in time. As did racism.

I studied alot of primary sources from the Reconstruction era when I took a class on Louisiana & the Civil War, and noticed alot of (white) southerners were super bitter because they're losing their lands and property, their friends are losing lands and property, the economy is in the shitter and everyone's broke. But at the same time, they're seeing black people gain land, gain property, gain political power. Obviously this perception was a vastly incorrect view of what was happening and why it was happening. But to the average, poorly informed post-war southerner, they see white people worse off in general, and black people better off in general, and conclude it's a zero-sum transfer of wealth and power from one skin color to another. Think about that type of resentment festering as a "pseudo-genome", because it was in fact advantageous as hell. Anyone who wanted anything could use racism to get these white southerners to follow and support them. Racism helped get people elected, helped people get rich.

I think about this when I look at the period between 1960-1990. During the 60's, minorities began gaining civil rights on a mass scale, and are finally able to "enter" American culture, and in the following decades you see more and more minority individuals becoming wealthy, becoming famous, etc. You see their cultural influence more and more. At the same time, however, the American population exceeds the number of American jobs available for the first time ever. Corporations, realizing there's more people than jobs, realize they can stop raising wages to entice people, "if you dont like it you can quit, there's dozens of people willing to take this job". So the inflation-adjusted average wage basically freezes around the 70's. But that's not enough, profits need to be higher, so by the 80's these corporations are realizing it's cheaper to simply build factories overseas where they can pay literal pennies to people to do jobs Americans used to do.

So now imagine you're a relatively average white dude living throughout this era. You're not an economist, you're not a historian, you might read the daily news but not much else. During this period, what seems to be happening? You see the economy beginning to stagnate, you see friends and family laid off and your own paycheck ain't getting any bigger. But for thirty years you've been watching TV and listening to the radio and you're seeing more and more minority politicians, minority businessmen, minority celebrities. And then someone like David Duke comes along, points these two facts out, and tells you that minorities are stealing wealth and power from Good, Hard Working White Americans. You don't see that minorities are also suffering economically because the previous generation's racism led to minorities being herded into ghettos, you just see more minorities on TV but you notice you're seeing more and more of them than you did 30 years ago, while outside and around you, your (mainly white) community experiences the impacts of the beginning of late-stage capitalism. Sure enough, that racism pseudo-gene kicks in, and since corporations are making record profits they can spend that money to find ways to blame the state of the economy on anyone but themselves. Previously people in power could just blame "the blacks" or whatever, but you can't do that anymore in a post-Civil Rights America (not openly, anyway), but this time around they played it a little more subtly. Corporations begin a campaign that goes like "sorry guy, we'd pay you more, but unfortunately we had to give all that money to the government, by the way the government uses tax money for welfare, by the way here's a 30-min news segment on how literally every welfare recipient is a crack-addict with a brand-new Cadillac in the yard.", and let the David Dukes of the world take that and run with it. And year after year these corporations shatter new records for profits while telling the rest of us that "sorry, there's just no money in the budget to give you a raise. Actually, we're going to let you go because it's cheaper to pay a child in singapore to work in our factories. And now, here's a 30-minute news segment about thousands of illegal immigrants and how they're all working on farms in California."

So yeah qan, "racism-as-a-pseudo-gene" makes alot of sense because in a way, you see how a small part of society has exploited racism to divert attention away from the fact that they're looting our country blind. It's incredibly advantageous in that sense. At the same time, it's advantageous for the increasingly oppressed proletariat, because they can make themselves feel better by blaming their own economic stress on someone else - black people, immigrants, welfare recipients, pick your poison.

[Dierienow]

A rational person can easily reach a racist mindset, since rationality describes logical decision-making within the given constraints. Therefore if you believe the constraints exist (whether they do, they're not the only constraints, or do not) then you can be quite an intelligent racist. It's only by questioning those beliefs/constraints that you can reach a higher understanding.

Trump supporters are on a low level of understanding. Dems are slightly higher. Yet thought is not bounded by two poles, and there is a higher understanding still.

Trump, Hillary. Racist, xim/xer. Mexican, American. Nazi, Antifa. Christian, Muslim. None of these terms describe reality fully. They form an individualized box where the definitions suit your world view according to the way that you, a person among 7 billion, have chosen to interpret it. The choice need not be conscious, but the path towards higher understanding is always chosen and never stumbled upon.

If you draw a small box with an intricate pattern, it is still a small box. If you draw a large box the pattern takes much longer, but the results are always more impressive, more inclusive, and the artist's skills, always, are much more developed.

[Crescent Seal]

Hey Ephemeral good to see you writing essays again on here bud. #Strong

[Ephemeral]

Hi Qan,
I know that genetics play a role, I just hate thinking that we are slaves to it. The most obvious support for your position are the studies they have done looking at separated twins (identical and fraternal twins who were immediately separated at birth and raised totally apart from each other). https://www.livescience.com/47288-tw...-genetics.html

But I like to think of genetics as a predisposition towards a behavior as opposed to dictating behavior. I think this can be seen in other animals too. Are all Pitbull dogs aggressive? Are all Toy Poodles non-aggressive? I agree that these breeds have predispositions toward levels of aggressiveness but we can easily change that behavior with training.

The nature/nurture debate has been going on for a long time but I do not think that anyone has a racism gene. And even if we allow that there might be a biological predisposition for such behavior, it sounds like a perfect excuse for humans to behave badly.

As humans we have control over our behaviors, this consciousness and realization is what allows human to sit upon the top of all other animals (and food chain). As each generation passes the human race is probably moving further way from our instinctual roots but frankly the current generation seems to be going in the wrong direction. If anything I think I am seeing this generation make even more sweeping generalizations towards others than my generation did.
Eph

[qan]

Hi Qan,
My opinion is that racism is not genetic, nor is sexism, nor is any other ‘ism’. Why? Because the underlying issue at hand is that ‘isms’ are simply sweeping generalizations. And making sweeping generalizations is just intellectual laziness; it is ‘easier’ to make a sweeping generalization than it is to spend additional time and effort to fully explain both sides of an issue. You can get your point across in far fewer words with generalizations. It is like saying some day we will not use statistics (which are just numeric generalizations). Humans are lazy and making generalizations is a very convenient shortcut to making a point. Laziness and convenience has nothing to do with genetics.

No disrespect intended toward you, but I still choose to side with the field of evolutionary biology on this one. I do agree that excessively generalizing based on the perceived traits of people is a kind of intellectual laziness. But I do still stand by the belief that there is a biological component to racism, because that's what the research currently indicates.

However, even if it's not strictly biological, the point remains the same: traits are passed on culturally because they have been at some point beneficial. The edict against premarital sex was preexisting in many cultures that had never encountered one another, because it generally gives costly human offspring (which have a notoriously long gestation time and childhood) a better chance at survival. It's not because everyone's naturally prudish (far from it). But the introduction of contraception made it possible to have a lot of sex with strangers without serious pregnancy risks, so this once almost universal cultural more has fallen by the wayside in just a few decades. It's a trait that's no longer all that beneficial. So cultural traits can appear and disappear in response to new circumstances much faster than biological ones -- you might even call culture a kind of pseudo-genome -- but they still exist only because they've provided some advantage, at some point in time. As did racism.

[Jones]

man, i almost forgot about totenkopf

[Jones]

for the uninformed, you are not making as much of a mockery of trump or saying anything really but you are ridiculing people who were affected by nazism including:
gestapos kicking people to death if they voted wrong party
einsatz
josef mengele
concenration camps which had a combined kill-rate of almost 12 million people

what trump did was not allowing illegal immigrants to get into country or whatever

do you see

[Jones]

i really have a problem with people comparing trump to hitler/nazi. it's like comparing obama to a white supremacist kkk westboro baptist church

but atleast we can tell people who make that comparison are retarded

[kthx]

Excuse me Zeebu but what did you say about xim/xer or xhey? I will have you know that facts are a racist misogynist way for nazi's to push the patriarchy you fucking cis scum. Jessup sexually identifies as factually fluid.

[Zeebu]

Military Budget is 55 % of all Government spending costs while Healthcare is only 6 %. They say a single payer is unattainable. Facepalm........

what the hell are you talking about. that is incredibly incorrect. youre an idiot.

the military is 15% of the total spending.

[kthx]

So you ate shitty food and now want us to pay for it and thats why you want bernie sanders, you are a waste of space, once the wall is built I hope we throw your useless ass over it.

[Dierienow]

Ya know I was going to come up with something funny but the american politics situation is so dire right now i just can't. after I drop fact after fact, throwing bomb afte bomb, you ask that question of all the ones you could ask. but yes she was so great I voted for her 6 times... and have a hard, greasy spot in my heart for Bernie SLANDERs and thx to years of a taco bell diet. which is why i need affordable health care more than ever. but not socialism like Bernie "divide-the-dems" Spenders wanted us americans stick by the free market thin and thick through the good and the bad. Hillary 2020 you go girl!!!

[Jones]

of my own political views

did you vote for hillary

[Dierienow]

Being wrong or stubbornly holding onto a point of view doesn't have a party affiliation. We are beasts with the capacity for higher reasoning but we are free to apply this capacity to malicious ends. My goal with this was to be a bit funny, and give the basis of my own political views I guess. My views are pretty liberal - based on my own life experiences, personality, and ideals that are unique to my experience only. We do share experiences more or less, though. We're all connected by society to some extent - it's why I can laugh at kthx's signature and avatar on here despite being thousands of miles away. We must be more similar than different in my estimation. That doesn't mean we have the same ideas, though - we are not actually connected and therefore my ideas cannot be known if I do not express them. I feel like I didn't communicate one of my most important ideas, though.

I've been watching The Apprentice lately, to have some idea of what Trump was like before politics and because I've never seen the show. The premise of the show is, a group of people are assembled from all over America with the goal of working together on various projects to win the contest and eventually become Trump's apprentice. At the start the group is at maximum capacity (every week Trump fires someone and the groups become smaller over time) and maximum chaos. Everyone comes from a background where they're exceptional at what they do: they're king shit. They've never had to be shy about their ideas - where they come from they are the "oracle" for their given line of work. As anyone with real world experience would have gathered, you can go much farther in life with full confidence in a sub-optimal idea than with zero confidence in the optimal one. Sure it's played up for TV but just look at TW, probably the furthest thing from a television show involving a billionaire and his golden suite. Has the group dynamic ever done anything but pull in every direction possible? It's human nature! We all have our ideas and think they're the right ones, and eventually someone has to say, "FUCK it, we're doing it this way whether it's right or wrong because nobody can agree on anything!" Often there's no time to discuss an issue properly, if those involved were even capable of doing so, because of the time limit on effective action. We could argue each other into the ground and reach the proper answer only to find there's no time left to implement it - of what value was the perfectly right answer in this instance? Yet, given an opportunity to coordinate in a less time-constrained environment, couldn't we agree on a few principles to start with that would make the next group decision much easier? Kind of like how, in the prisoner's dilemma, if we had the ability to communicate beforehand, we could quite easily maximize both of our gains. Too often this is not possible and the result is everyone "betrays" each other resulting in the worst possible outcome.

I saw on Wikipedia recently that one of the generals involved in the Croatian War was convicted of worst Mugatu cosplay and crimes against humanity for his role in the Bosnian genocide. Hatred in this world has very real consequences (of course I'm not saying that Americans are on that same exact level right now) but I admit I'm so devoid of knowledge about that part of the world that I couldn't figure out: what is the difference between a Croat, a Bosnian, and a Serb? Ask this question on Quora, for example, and people's heads will twist off. The languages are different! They aren't the same ethnicity! Some have more ties to Europe/NATO! And perhaps the most divisive characteristic of all: the religions are totally different! I guarantee if you take a microscope to the ground you will find the bacterial culture on one square foot is much different than the culture on another square foot in the same house! Yet, by virtue of our level of perspective, we're inclined to classify a house as "one", within the outermost 6 sides afforded by your property rights. What ignorance this is - for starters there are more bacteria than human cells, why should our perspective take priority? It certainly can't be because our perspective is somehow more total or all-inclusive: how many people have thought about their home in this way? We've taken it upon ourselves to define things as such, not through supreme reasoning or understanding but through what is most immediate and therefore comfortable. Imagine again, that through some chance perspective, you are looking upon Earth not as if it's a huge rock where you must line up in an airport for hours to see any good part of, but as a speck of dust in the universe, and you are applying your microscope as you've done to the floor in your house. The idea that these people are different in any way that allowed for war, genocide, poverty, suffering, mistreatment, different rights, even greed would be among the most foolish and ignorant ideas you can have. Yet try telling a Serb that they are essentially the same as a Croat or Bosnian or any variation of that and you will be labeled a fool at the very best. At the end of the general's trial when the verdict was given as guilty, and here's the reason why it was so newsworthy, he goes, "Judges, [I] am not a war criminal. With disdain, I reject your verdict!" and then took a drink of potassium cyanide (poison). To accentuate what a brilliant man he must've been, the Wikipedia article says he had three university degrees and "graduated as an electrical engineer with a GPA of 4.5/5." I can't help but feel like the biggest fool in the world compared to this man, who surely had a far greater understanding of how it worked.

Now to bring it back to the thread and topic at hand. I hope to go through some of the comments and address them with my own perspective, despite there being no reward or even inclination for me to do so at this moment, other than the feeling that I have started this thread and now must continue to support it like the manchild it is.

RE: Racism
It probably is genetic to the extent that any behaviour can be classified as genetic - which is to say partly so. It is one of those prioner's dilemmas I mentioned above: if you and your neighbour are both different racist tribes, there will be maximum harm. If only one of you is racist, you will receive harm but your neighbour receives none. And, if both of you weren't racist at all, there would be the least amount of harm. So you can see that for every scenario (given different initial conditions, such as the assumption that your neighbour is already racist) there exists a local solution that minimizes your harm. But, if taken from the global perspective, it is clear the best solution that minimizes harm to everyone is to not have racism at all.

RE: Conservatism and Low IQ
It's interesting and I don't think that it's totally without merit, but only if you conflate IQ and wisdom. Incredibly intelligent people are capable of atrocity on a much larger scale than idiots probably - an idiot couldn't so much as plan it all much less carry it out with efficiency. But on average "liberals" will have a higher IQ because while wisdom doesn't preclude intelligence, the reverse is likely true. Wisdom without a base of intelligence or knowledge or experience is likely not wisdom at all. So if you believe liberals are capable of more wisdom (let's define wisdom, for shits and giggles, as the ability to reach the global solution that minimizes all harm in the prisoner's dilemma above, but in more situations) then it follows that liberals are slightly more intelligent on average than conservatives. None of it matters though and that meme image is pretty... special.

RE: Jessup/Tax Cuts
Thank you. Did you see all the other crap they're stuffing into the bill? They're eliminating the mandate that requires all Americans to have health insurance or pay a penalty. Obamacare sucks but that's because universal healthcare would be impossible in the current political climate. At least more people had healthcare.. oh well. The government gets to save money which is far more important than human lives obviously. They're also reversing the Johnson Amendment that will allow churches to endorse political parties in a blow to intellectual freedom. Also 1.5 Million acres of an Alaskan wildlife refuge will be open to oil drilling. "Republicans have attempted to allow drilling in the refuge almost fifty times..." Speaking of almost 50, the controversial bill passed through the Senate with a vote of 51-49, a clear indication of health within current American politics.

[kthx]

It is almost like the people who are actually racist are the ones who constantly see racism everywhere, go figure. (Already knew this)